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Challenging Inequality

Variation across Postindustrial Societies

Challenging Inequality

Variation across Postindustrial Societies

A wide-ranging examination of how policies, parties, and labor strength affect inequality in post-industrial societies.

Not all countries are unequal in the same ways or to the same degree. In Challenging Inequality, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens analyze different patterns of increasing income inequality in post-industrial societies since the 1980s, assessing the policies and social structures best able to mitigate against the worst effects of market inequality. Combining statistical data analysis from twenty-two countries with a comparative historical analysis of Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United States, Huber and Stephens identify the factors that drive increases in inequality and shape persistent, marked differences between countries. Their statistical analysis confirms generalizable patterns and in-depth country studies help to further elucidate the processes at work.

Challenging Inequality shows how the combination of globalization and skill-biased technological change has led to both labor market dualization and rising unemployment levels, which in turn have had important effects on inequality and poverty. Labor strength—at both the society level and the enterprise level—has helped to counter rising market income inequality, as has a history of strong human capital spending. The generosity of the welfare state remains the most important factor shaping redistribution, while the consistent power of left parties is the common denominator behind both welfare state generosity and human capital investment.

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Political Science: Comparative Politics, Public Policy

Sociology: Social Organization--Stratification, Mobility

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Reviews

“Challenging Inequality is the latest installment in a massive corpus on welfare-state development and redistributive politics that Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens have produced over the last four and a half decades. This book belongs to the strand of their scholarship devoted to postindustrial political economies…Although Huber and Stephens recognize that inequality has been on the rise in most of the countries included in their analyses, Challenging Inequality represents a laudable effort to reassert the importance of cross-national diversity for understanding the economic and political determinants of inequality.”

Perspectives on Politics

“In Challenging Inequality political scientists Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens present a timely, comprehensive, and methodologically rigorous analysis of rising inequality in affluent capitalist democracies. Drawing on decades of research in comparative political economy, the authors skillfully integrate quantitative and qualitative empirical analysis with theoretical insights to examine the structural and political drivers of economic inequality.”

Social Forces

“This book is a genuine tour de force. Picking up where Piketty left off, Huber and Stephens give us an in-depth scrutiny of the causes behind rising inequality and poverty, and how these diverge across nations. The analyses point to multiple smoking guns, including globalization, new technologies, and deregulation. But what really matters are strong welfare states upheld by the power of labor.”

Gøsta Esping-Andersen | Pompeu Fabra University

“Huber and Stephens turn their keen eyes to income inequality throughout the affluent world. Using a mix of data and methods, they seamlessly weave together three inter-related lines of analysis: inequality patterns across countries and over time, country-specific policy interventions that mitigate inequality, and the political and economic factors that shape both market-generated inequality and inequality-reducing policies. This superb book promises to reshape contemporary inequality scholarship.”

Janet Gornick | coeditor of "Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries"

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1.       Introduction

Part I.          The Shapes and Determinants of Inequality: Broad Trends
Chapter 2.       Wage Dispersion
Chapter 3.       Household Income Inequality
Chapter 4.       Top Income Shares of National Income
Chapter 5.       Poverty
Chapter 6.       Social Policy
Chapter 7.       Social Investment versus Social Consumption?

Part II.         A Closer Look at Four Trajectories: Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United States
Chapter 8.       Germany
Chapter 9.       Spain
Chapter 10.     Sweden
Chapter 11.     United States
Chapter 12.     The Cases Compared
Chapter 13.     Conclusion

Appendix A.   Figures and Tables, All Countries
Appendix B.    Figures and Tables, Case Studies
Appendix C.    Operationalization of Variables
Appendix D.   Statistical Estimations
Appendix E.    Alternative Statistical Estimators
Notes
References
Index